Artist Statement
Budden’s work explores the complexities of spectatorship and the voyeuristic exploits within both cinematic practices and the traditions of figurative painting. The body occupies theatrical and highly staged, yet ambiguous, spaces that collapse the divide between reality and fiction. A space known only to the sitter. The cropped body is framed and disguised within illusionist portals to empower the observed to become the observer. These ghostly, psychologically layered, images haunt their audience. The spectator is given as a cold shoulder as the relationship between abjection and desire is questioned.
Through its fragmentation, the body breaks down traditional modes of representation. Instead, the aesthetic whole of the human frame is replaced by an inner voice, as the interior and exterior fuse. The mouth recurs as a metonym for this liminal space and the body becomes a site of rupture, autonomy and agency.
The work seeks to move beyond the threshold of conscious perception through the use of subliminal messaging and symbolic imagery such as fish, forests, and the ocean. All of which are symbols of the depths of the human psyche in Jungian psychology. The body is framed as morphic and escapes existing archetypes. Just as the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse, the self finds power in its fluctuating and indefinite state.
Bio / CV
Scarlett Budden (b.1998 London, United Kingdom) is a British figurative painter working in London. Her work focus on the complexities of spectatorship and voyeuristic exploits within both cinematic practices and the traditions of figurative painting.
She completed a First Class BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Newcastle University in 2022, and completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2024.
Upcoming, July 2026, Exposition Hortense, Paris, France
April 2026, KunstRAI 2026, Cold Age Fever, K:art Studio, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
January 2026, PELT, Ohsh Projects, London UK
November 2025, JEM, Sim Smith, London, UK
August 2025, Material Memory, Studio West Residency, London, UK
June 2025, Flotsam and Jetsam, curated by Jamie Hope, Twilight Contemporary, London, UK
March 2025, ‘Paradise Lost’, Art on a Postcard, London, UK
March 2025, Face to Face, curated by Josephine May Bailey, 8 Vine Yard, London, UK
January 2025, South Open 3, Ohsh Projects, London, UK
November 2024, Stemming from Unwelt, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
August 2024- August 2025- Residency with Studio West Arts, London, UK
June 2024, RCA MA Painting Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
April 2024, Beauty in Chaos, Hew Hood Gallery, London, UK
February 2024, Body Songs, Fitzrovia Gallery, London, UK
July 2022- Newcastle Graduate Show, The Copeland Gallery, London, UK
June 2022- Newcastle Graduate Show, The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, UK
Contact
+44 772 597 8970
scarlett.budden@sky.com